The "figurative" heart

by Sour Grapes 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Sour Grapes

  About 25 years ago I gave a talk about how when the Bible talks about the heart that it is the literal heart and how the heart and the brain are connected by nerve tissue. The Watchtower even stated that some people who received a heart transplant would take on some of the personality of the donor.Then all of a sudden the Borg changed and said that when the Bible refers to the heart that it is figurative. Then when ever the Watchtower referred to the heart it always put the word figurative in front of it.

  Does anyone know why there was a change in the use of the word heart? When the Bible says to love god with your whole heart, mind, and soul, it is your real mind and real soul but only a figurative heart? There had to be something that caused this change. I always wondered what would have caused this understanding.
• 

  Diogenesister

  I don't know why they changed Sour Grapes, but as a wee child I very clearly remember being told that the heart has its own "mind" as such.

  I still don't think it's one of the more outrageous medical faux pas Watchtower has made, after all the pain one feels in the heart is very, very real when one looses a loved one. I mean the pain is very much localized in the actual heart region so it seems pretty believable there is nerve tissue from the heart to the.brain...anyone know how that works??
• 

  Hairtrigger

  Because the GB has a figurative heart . They are so removed from what real love and concern for one’s fellowman truly is, that they live in a twisted fantasy-make -up -world -of -make -believe. Make shit up and the rank and file believe.

  Figurative hearts of deluded figureheads of a go-figure religion!
• 

  Pete Zahut

  There had to be something that caused this change.

  Back in the late 80s there was a local Dentist in our area who was dying and volunteered to be the first recipient of a mechanical heart. He lived for a time afterward and showed the full range of human emotions.

  This, coupled with all the heart transplants that became commonplace afterward, the JW notion that the heart was something more than a pump, was blown to shreds.

  True to form, they never owned up to the misinformation they had spread all over the world. Instead, they just stopped talking about it until it just went away.
  But it didn’t go away.... lots of us remember.
• 

  cha ching

  My guess? Someone, of the higher ups... or someone's friend or child was going to die...

  They needed to change it so that they could "conscientiously" receive much needed medical treatment.

  
  
• 

  minimus

  I sent a letter questioning the idea that the heart was literal in the early 1970s... Watchtower society told me to be patient and five months later they had a question from Reeders stating was not literally. Then they told me to be more involved with preaching the good news of the kingdom rather than questioning them. LOL true story
• 

  Sour Grapes

  I think the heart is more than a pump and is effected by our emotions.
• 

  zeb

  Heart? I have only to think a moment or two of a young lady who was in my life so many years ago and my heart misses a beat..
  
• 

  snare&racket

  The heart is a muscular pump, nothing more.

  I have somewhat more experience than the average person, having examined, held and dissected a human heart myself.

  I was very interested in this too when i left the JW's. The answer lies in ancient egypt. The Egyptians wrongly held the heart as something more than it was.

  They believed that the heart, rather than the brain, was the source of human wisdom, as well as emotions, memory, the soul and the personality itself.

  Religions and cultures of the region adopted this false belief and it remains to this day for some.
• 

  Vidiot

  WT theologians were very susceptible to new junk science and quack medicine back in the day.

  Kind of ironic, considering how suspicious they are of the real thing, now.